What a fantastic weekend for New Zealand sports fans. I’m conveniently ignoring the cricket. It did get me thinking about how well New Zealand companies do competing against Australian companies. Usually we’re crap. Just think of Air New Zealand, Telecom and The Warehouse and wince.

But maybe there’s hope. 

I’m a huge fan of TradeMe, as are many New Zealanders, but it is essentially a domestic company when we really need very big international companies if we are to catch up to Australia and grow incomes fast.

We need a Nokia. Fonterra was supposed to be our Nokia, but its high debt load, its disastrous Chinese foray and the reluctance of its farmer shareholders to allow in outside capital has shut down that prospect for now. Maybe TradeMe could become our Nokia.

There were various murmurings when Fairfax bought TradeMe in 2006 that it might be launched in Australia. But the nature of auction sites makes it extremely difficult to break into a market once a player has established dominance, as TradeMe has here and as Ebay had – apparently – in Australia.

The whole point of an auction site is that it is the only place for buyers and sellers to go. That’s why daily newspapers worked as the place for all classifieds before the advent of the likes of TradeMe and Ebay. It was the only place to go. Breaking in once a player is dominant is nigh on impossible.

So the immediate answer in 2006 was that TradeMe would be wasting its time going up against Ebay because Ebay was already dominant. It would be a painful case of head vs brick wall.

But maybe not. Lance Wiggs over at his blog has an excellent piece showing that TradeMe is actually doing much better than Ebay Australia at keeping its customers happy and fostering online trade. Maybe Ebay is now weak enough to attempt an attack.

Today eBay Australia has 1,113,647 listings located in Australia, eBay.com has 25.2m listings located in the USA while Trade Me has 1,255,082 listings in NZ. (That’s right, there are more actual listings on Trade Me than on eBay Australia.)

That’s 55 listings per 1000 Australians, 84 per 1000 US citizens and 305 listings per 1000 New Zealanders. That’s astonishing - 5.6 times difference between NZ and Australia, and 3.6 times between NZ and USA.

Lance reckons it’s because Ebay prioritises its business customers over personal ones and has become a giant shopping mall that prioritises others’ brands rather than person-to-person deals.

eBay’s sites are enormous, and they are complicated and difficult to navigate and use. Meanwhile Trade Me has managed to maintain the essential simpleness and usability, with a the cartoon-like nature. 

eBay.com’s increasing push for “fraud protection” to the critically flawed Paypal payment system has made it harder to buy, and harder for sellers to guarantee they will get their money. With Trade Me payments are via bank to bank deposit, or, increasingly, direct credit card transaction. 

Meanwhile eBay has scores of MBAs/product managers/marketers that all, it seems, want to expand features. That means the site (feels like it) has no single owner, and the resulting complex mess is a travesty.

So how about it TradeMe?

Why don’t you have a go at taking on Ebay in Australia?

Some disclosures. I used to work for Fairfax, which of course owns this site and owns TradeMe. I also sat on the advisory board for TradeMe for about a year until the end of 2007, which also means I know absolutely nothing about what TradeMe is doing now. I am, by the way, a huge fan of Sam Morgan and all the boys and girls who have built TradeMe into an amazing business. So no bias there…

I also worked with Lance Wiggs when we were both at Fairfax Digital. We had a lot of fun and I have a huge respect for his insights in this whole area. Lance worked with Sam and Co at TradeMe for a period before joining Fairfax Digital, which means he knows an awful lot more about the theory and practice of how TradeMe works than I do.  The net result of all these disclosures is that we’re both big fans of TradeMe and have worked for Fairfax, which means we’re horribly conflicted, but a little informed.

Last 5 posts by Bernard Hickey

• Dear John: Please tell us the truth about the economy - we can handle it - February 23rd, 2009
• Kill the glass white elephant in Dunedin with a rates revolt - February 9th, 2009
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• Why we should give thanks when Telecom ‘exports’ 250 jobs to Manila - February 4th, 2009
• Freeze public-sector wages and lift the minimum wage - February 2nd, 2009